The problem is allowing companies to do contracts that their lawyers know are null and void (like the above) but the employee may not know.

Employees thinking they are subject to legal penalties/fight due to a non-enforceable non-compete gets the company 90% of what they want, anyway, and so to prevent that they should be strongly punished.

> So even if you sign that clause you are not bound by it.

Jimmy John's was making its low-level employees sign non-competes, for example. This was ridiculous on its face, and probably wouldn't hold up in court. However, the people affected by it were least able to take it to court.

Right, the way it would work is that you are getting some sort of payment every month for not competing. If you choose to start competing, those payments stop. You can choose to stop the non-compete at any time, you are just giving up that income stream.